The idea of a football coach facing criminal indictment for the death of a player who collapsed, and later died, while running sprints in the August heat met with strong reaction in local circles yesterday.Coach David Jason Stinson of Pleasure Ridge High School in Kentucky was arraigned on a charge of reckless homicide, and released without bond, Monday for the death of 15-year-old Max Gilpin, one of his players, who collapsed while running sprints during football practice.This sends up a huge warning flare to local coaches.”First,” said St. John’s Prep’s Jim O’Leary, “it’s hard for me to think that anyone in this profession would do anything to intentionally cause a kid to collapse in the heat.””But it’s scary,” says St. Mary’s Matt Durgin. “It really makes you aware that it can happen. You just hope it doesn’t.”Most coaches have rules in place that – they hope – will prevent a similar situation to happen here.”We don’t have the type of heat up there they have down there,” said Classical’s Tim Phelps, “but still, you have to be ready for it.”You have to have a lot of water breaks, and I’ve even heard of coaches wetting down towels and putting them over the players’ heads.”The problem, coaches say, is that while they plead with their players to come to preseason camp in shape, not all of them do.”If you have 50-60 kids come to camp,” said Swampscott coach Steve Dembowski, “you might have only half of them who have worked out over the summer.”Now, you’re telling them to get up at 6 in the morning and get here to look at film. A lot of them don’t eat breakfast, and that’s something else you have to consider. We’re constantly telling them to eat ? to get something in their systems to tide them over.”Phelps agrees.”And even if they’ve worked all summer, they’re still going to be affected by the heat,” he said.So, coaches have their rules. Dembowski says that any time a player feels the need to hydrate, he’s free to do so.”We talk hydration, and nutrition, to them just about the whole season,” he said.When Gary Molea was still the head coach at English, “I used to be the one walking around with the water bottles while my assistants coached.”One year,” he said, “the boosters brought these long hoses that we hooked up to a couple of sinks in the locker room, and we hosed the kids down.”At Bishop Fenwick, where the practice field offers no prospect of shade, coach Dave Woods tries not to have the players out there during the hours between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. He also isn’t a fan of the dreaded double sessions – a point on which Molea agrees.”I don’t see the point,” he said. “A lot of times, it just comes down to survival.”But he doesn’t see it as conducive to teaching football.”You have them long enough, and it’s hot enough, and you lose them anyway,” agrees Molea.All the coaches who were interviewed say they take great care to consider the welfare of the players before they worry about wins and losses. Last December, for example, Swampscott’s Steve Moran ran a kickoff back 90 yards in a playoff game at Arlington Catholic.”We sat him out the next four or five plays, even though it was the playoffs, and even though we were really hit hard with injuries, because it was more important to make sure he was OK,” said Dembowski.Durgin tells his players to watch their teammates, and to speak up if one of them looks to be struggling.”We want them to go hard,” he said, “but if you don’t feel well, raise your hand.”Coaches like O’Leary try to hold their own conditioning camps before the regular workouts begin (something that is perfectly legal as long as it’s not sports-specific).”We run three nights a week all during July,” he said. “And the coaches are there to supervise. We don’t run much once camp starts.”He also has been known to call all the players over to the swimming pool on campus and allow them to take a dip to cool off.”It’s not just water,” he said. “It’s cooling down the whole body.”Woods, too, goes easy on the boot-camp techniques i